Gen Con So Cal 2004 - Day Two

Day 1 was a solo trip for me. Friday, Day 2, found me accompanied by my son (who also plays D&D). Conveniently enough, his school had a field trip to Knott's Berry Farm (another local theme park), so I had no problems allowing him to skip school for a day. He's turned into a regular convention junky since I first took him to Strategicon a year ago last May.

As GhengisWong noted in his Day 1 report, the miniature side of gaming seems to be overwhelmed by Tradable Card Games at Gen Con. Certainly, the TCG area of the convention floor is about half again as big as the miniatures gaming area - but there is quite a bit of miniatures gaming going on, and I'll be covering that in my Day 3 report. Despite that, there isn't as much of a disparity in miniatures vs. cards as it first appears.

True, there were at least five booths of vendors selling cards and card-related products exclusively, with another two or three offering to buy those cards for mere pennies on the dollar. This doesn't count the Wizards, Upper Deck and Nintendo areas where they are promoting their respective products. Also there are several smaller companies who have produced card-based games as well, although these don't necessarily fall into the TCG definition.

Historical miniatures are what is lacking the most.

That selection is limited to Scale Specialties' small stock of ACW, small-scale steam ships, even smaller-scale modern ships, and 1/160th tanks from Dye4minis's Minifigs.